1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed towards a method for making a shaped nut cluster and more particularly to a method for making a plurality of nut-cluster hexahedrons and cubes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Snack foods are popular and convenient foods. In recent years, consumer demand has been dramatically increasing for healthy foods in general, and healthy snack foods in particular. Nuts and seeds are healthy, natural food products, but lack the sweet flavor that consumers demand. One prior art solution to providing a nut-based snack food is peanut brittle. Peanut brittle is typically made by mixing 40% to 60% raw nuts by weight with a binder solution. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,074,684 discloses a peanut brittle having 8 parts of peanuts to 6 parts of corn syrup and 4 parts of peanut butter to 3 parts of corn syrup by volume. Thus, before the peanut butter is added, which dilutes the amount of raw peanuts, the mixture has less than 60% by weight peanuts. Many consumers, however, are demanding even higher levels of natural food products in their snack foods. Unfortunately, it is difficult to make peanut brittle-like clusters at higher nut contents because it is difficult to form and cut the resultant mixture into squares on a commercial scale. As a result, as illustrated by U.S. Pat. No. 4,010,284, many nut clusters are simply made into irregularly shaped free formed clusters. Consequently, a need exists for a method for making a plurality of nut cluster cubes with a high nut content on a commercial scale.